Oracle’s Challenge to $10B Defense Contract Overruled

A federal judge has decided to dismiss Oracle’s
claim that there was an impropriety in the tendering practices for a
ten-billion-dollar Pentagon contract, stating that the issues raised by Oracle
in their case were unfounded. The eight-month long legal battle saw Oracle
claim that the choice of Amazon’s AWS services as an eligible partner for the
deal was tainted due to a series of employees leaving the Defense Department to
work in Amazon. The ruling now clears the way for the defense department to
decide which of the two eligible partners, Microsoft or Amazon, will get the
coveted contract.

In a statement released to the press,
Elissa Smith, spokeswoman for the Defense Department, stated that the ruling
reaffirms the DOD’s position on “fair, full, and open competition.”
She further stressed the critical need that the Defense Department has to get
these capabilities in place, citing several military services needing
deployment of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) framework.

The JEDI is a cloud-computing
infrastructure that the Defense Department intends to use as a springboard for
artificial intelligence programs that individual departments may utilize as the
need arises. Additionally, the framework is designed to allow for the secure
sharing of information between command centers and deployed personnel. Each
department would have its own cloud connected to work alongside JEDI so that
information can quickly be passed between departments as well, increasing the
efficiency of sharing of pertinent information.

A Time-Consuming Road Block

While Oracle didn’t manage to block the
award of the contract entirely, the investigation into the matter pushed back
the award of the contract and has led to a revised timeline for the project’s
completion. The Defense Department intends to award the contract in August – a
delay of about four months from its initial estimates. An email sent to the
press by an AWS spokesperson states that Amazon, “stands ready to support
and serve what’s most important — the DoD’s mission of protecting the security
of our country.”